Professor Sebastian Johnston
Director & Chief Medical Officer
Professor Sebastian L. Johnston is Chairman of the Board, Chief Medical Officer and Co-founder.
Professor Sebastian Johnston has been performing respiratory virus-related research including pre-clinical studies and human virus challenge studies in asthma for more than 30 years and is the only investigator worldwide to have performed such studies in people with COPD. He has to date successfully infected over 480 subjects with rhinovirus, including over 50 subjects with COPD and over 100 subjects with asthma, including moderately severe asthma and asthma that is not well controlled at the time of challenge.
Sebastian Johnston is Professor of Respiratory Medicine & Allergy at the National Heart & Lung Institute, Imperial College London, and Honorary Consultant Physician in Respiratory Medicine & Allergy at St Mary’s Hospital, Imperial Healthcare NHS Trust, London.
He is Head of Airway Disease at the National Heart & Lung Institute, the Clinical Academic Training Lead for Respiratory Medicine at Imperial College London and former Director of the MRC & Asthma UK Centre in Allergic Mechanisms of Asthma and the Asthma UK Clinical Chair. He has been performing virus-related research including human virus challenge studies in asthma for more than 30 years and is the only investigator worldwide to have performed such studies in people with COPD. He also developed the world’s first successful mouse model of rhinovirus infection, published in Nature Medicine in 2008 and has used this to develop pre-clinical mouse models of rhinovirus-induced exacerbation of both asthma and COPD.
Notable discoveries emerging from his past work include establishing the viral aetiology of asthma and COPD exacerbations, demonstrating increased susceptibility to viral and bacterial infections in individuals with asthma and COPD compared to healthy individuals, and mechanisms governing these observations, describing novel and effective treatment approached for active asthma and COPD.
He has a long and productive history of collaborations with both the pharmaceutical and biotech industry, his work has led to more than 500 research publications with over 70,000 citations.
Sebastian brings this great wealth of experience to Virtus, to help expedite the development of new treatments for lung disease into the clinic. He believes that human virus challenge studies are the perfect PoC and PoM study in early clinical development and that efficacy therein is predictive of efficacy in later Phase 3 studies.
Professor Sebastian Johnston
Director & Chief Medical Officer
Professor Sebastian L. Johnston is Chairman of the Board, Chief Medical Officer and Co-founder.
Professor Sebastian Johnston has been performing respiratory virus-related research including pre-clinical studies and human virus challenge studies in asthma for more than 30 years and is the only investigator worldwide to have performed such studies in people with COPD. He has to date successfully infected over 480 subjects with rhinovirus, including over 50 subjects with COPD and over 100 subjects with asthma, including moderately severe asthma and asthma that is not well controlled at the time of challenge.
Sebastian Johnston is Professor of Respiratory Medicine & Allergy at the National Heart & Lung Institute, Imperial College London, and Honorary Consultant Physician in Respiratory Medicine & Allergy at St Mary’s Hospital, Imperial Healthcare NHS Trust, London.
He is Head of Airway Disease at the National Heart & Lung Institute, the Clinical Academic Training Lead for Respiratory Medicine at Imperial College London and former Director of the MRC & Asthma UK Centre in Allergic Mechanisms of Asthma and the Asthma UK Clinical Chair. He has been performing virus-related research including human virus challenge studies in asthma for more than 30 years and is the only investigator worldwide to have performed such studies in people with COPD. He also developed the world’s first successful mouse model of rhinovirus infection, published in Nature Medicine in 2008 and has used this to develop pre-clinical mouse models of rhinovirus-induced exacerbation of both asthma and COPD.
Notable discoveries emerging from his past work include establishing the viral aetiology of asthma and COPD exacerbations, demonstrating increased susceptibility to viral and bacterial infections in individuals with asthma and COPD compared to healthy individuals, and mechanisms governing these observations, describing novel and effective treatment approached for active asthma and COPD.
He has a long and productive history of collaborations with both the pharmaceutical and biotech industry, his work has led to more than 500 research publications with over 70,000 citations.
Sebastian brings this great wealth of experience to Virtus, to help expedite the development of new treatments for lung disease into the clinic. He believes that human virus challenge studies are the perfect PoC and PoM study in early clinical development and that efficacy therein is predictive of efficacy in later Phase 3 studies.
